


tell me despair, yours

by feminist14er



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4631001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke leaves Bellamy and the Ark. Eventually, she returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell me despair, yours

_You do not have to be good_

She can still feel his body against hers, when she turns to go. She can feel the ghost of his cheek against her lips, can smell the sweat from the junction of his shoulder and his neck where she nestled her face, briefly. She can feel the imprint of his body against her breasts, her arms. She can feel him everywhere, and she isn’t sure that it’s a comfort.

She was hoping that when she turned around, the weight would instantly lift from her shoulders.

It doesn’t.

_You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting_

She goes to the dropship first. She has carried nothing away with her, just her gun and the clothes on her back, and she doesn’t know what she wants, doesn’t know where to go or what to do, just to be away from there, be away from _them_. That was all she wanted.

The dropship is a burial ground, a place of haunting memories, and she doesn’t want to stay, but she knows it will protect her for a time, and if she cannot handle the presence of the living, she thinks, just maybe, that she can handle the presence of the dead.

She doesn’t actively want to die, but she imagines, as in the stories she read growing up, that Death is an old friend, a welcome friend, and a reassurance in the harsh world of the living. Her friends are in its company, and if she doesn’t long for that kind of company, she doesn’t mind its proximity, either.

There is nothing for her to bury, here. She spends cold nights huddled against the metal walls until she’s able to set up snares. Winter is coming, and if she doesn’t want to wither away, then she has to prepare, has to stay warm and fed. She’s not sure why, exactly, because all of a sudden, she has no obligations to anyone. But – she left. She didn’t lay down to die, so it’s with a mental shrug that she assumes it’s enough to keep hunting, keep trying to sew warm clothing for herself.

She eats little, sleeps little. She knows that ghosts are a myth, but she feels the presence of the dead all around her, and she can’t apologize to the living, but she tends to the graves of Wells, of Charlotte. Finn doesn’t have a resting place here, but most of her memories of him are here, so she makes a memorial for him, leaves flowers if she finds them.

She makes herself a med kit.

She wonders at every step why she’s doing what she’s doing. She bears the weight of hundreds of lives, but she’s chosen not to face them. She’s chosen not to face the remnants of her people, the people that she has sacrificed and sacrificed for, and she’s really, truly not sure what she’s living for if it isn’t them. She hasn’t had anything resembling her own life in so long that she’s not sure what she wants.

But there is quiet, here in the forest, and she thinks she wants that.

She sews herself a cloak, a blanket, and when she gets too cold in the metal walls, she thinks about building herself a shelter. She doesn’t. She sews up a new backpack for herself, places the few things she has in it, and leaves.

\--

It snows on her second day away from the dropship, and she realizes that for all her hard work, she isn’t warm enough. She is huddled by her fire, and she can’t sleep through the night for the cold, for the fear that she’ll die in the cold, and she thinks again about the lives she’s responsible for: the ones she’s taken, the ones she’s saved, and the ones she’s indebted to. The lines blur in so many of those categories, and she doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to look too closely at her obligations, her connections to people.

A glimmer of dark hair, dark eyes flashes through her mind before she clamps down on the memory. _No_ , she thinks. That is a road she cannot walk, not now, and maybe not ever. The things she has done in his name – she cannot think about it. She doesn’t want him to have to bear those lives. She will bear them for him, and if not gladly, then she will suffer the weight in silence, so that he is not affected.

\--

She survives the first cold snap, and she sews herself another blanket in the next month. She keeps walking, slowly but surely, and if she isn’t sure where her footsteps are taking her at first, she knows when she reaches the doors. She was coming here eventually, one way or another. She will never be happy to be at this place, and it fills her with a deep sense of dread, the guilt weighing her down. She thinks about sinking to her knees, giving way to her shame, letting tears stream down her face.

Thinks of other faces, the faces that survived. She doesn’t give way.

She walks inside, and it is _warm_ , for all that this is nothing but catacombs now, but it is sheltered from the wind, and the snow, and she will never be able to bring herself to sleep inside these walls again, but she thinks briefly, longingly, of beds and blankets. 

She salvages everything she can. If they had left the Mountain under any other circumstances, she knows he would have been right at her side, taking clothes and blankets, pillows if not mattresses. It feels sacrilegious on many grounds: taking from the dead, the murdered feels like another level of betrayal, and taking advantage of the horrors of the Mountain in the name of comfort feels like a frightening blurring of morals, but she knows her people will need it. Knows how cold it is, knows that they are still sick and weak, and god only knows what they’re doing for food right now. They need the warmth, even if that she is all she can provide.

She takes it all outside, every last useful thing that she can find. She looks at it, and after some time, she takes another blanket for herself. She looks at Dante Wallace’s drawing pencils with disgust, wants to break them in half, grind the charcoal into dust.

But. But. 

Her fingers twitch at her side, longing to draw, to record what has happened, to remind her of dreams and good things.

She sets them aside, will decide what to do with them later.

It takes her several trips, under the cover of dark, to deposit the linens and clothing outside Camp Jaha. She doesn’t get close enough for the guards to spot her, doesn’t want Bellamy to see her, doesn’t want to get anywhere close enough to be recognized. She pulls her hood far over her hair, uses the light of the moon and stays back.

She has no desire to walk through the gates.

When she is done with that, she finds the shovel she left behind, begins digging graves. She digs and digs, her hands blistering, bleeding, callousing over the course of several weeks. She thought about setting fire to the whole place, but she’s not sure it would burn well enough, and she doesn’t want to attract attention to what she’s doing.

The only grave she marks is Maya’s, and there aren’t any flowers left for her to leave on top of the mound, but she makes a sign, knows that it can be found, if anyone looks. She feels a lurch in her chest when she thinks of Jasper, and it is with a great deal of force that she swallows down her tears.

When she starts burying the children, the tears come hot and fast. She swallows down huge, gasping breaths, her sobs forming clouds in the air as the tears roll down her face. It is now that she drops her shovel, drops to the ground.

She rolls herself up in her blankets that night without eating, her stomach in knots. She wanted to save them, wanted to find another way. 

She thinks that she didn’t try hard enough.

\--

It is after that night that she starts having nightmares that leave her sweating, shaking, and sometimes, crying. She sees the charred remains of TonDC, sees the blistered faces of children at the Mountain, sees them set against the backdrop of his face. She shudders herself awake, tries to ignore her subconscious. Not only does she not want to think about the things she did in his name, she doesn’t want to think about him _full stop_. She doesn’t want to think about his horror, knowing the acts she allowed in his name. Instead, she sleeps less, watches the moon and the stars tracing shadows across the sky. She remembers an even better view of the night sky, remembers when her life seemed so much more simple. 

She would never trade her people for that life, she thinks. But then, maybe she has traded them for something different.

When she finishes the graves, she can tell that she’s lost weight, that she isn’t doing well. She’s not sure where to go from here, knows the sensible thing to do would be to go back to Camp Jaha, but the thought makes her nauseated. _No_ , she thinks. She can’t go back there.

His face flashes through her mind again, the sadness in his eyes another knife in her fragile heart. She isn’t ready, isn’t sure if she’ll ever be ready, to go back and face him.

When she leaves, she takes the drawing pencils and the graphite.

\--

She wanders deep into the forest, safe in the knowledge that the acid fog is disabled. She doesn’t know where the Trigedakru are now, but she sees no sign of them. She has no idea what has happened to the alliance after Mount Weather, and she finds that she doesn’t really care. She thinks of Lexa briefly, shivers.

She doesn’t know what could have been, but she knows now: there will be nothing.

It is late that night that she thinks about it more. She wonders if she would have made the same decision, if it had been offered to her. She doesn’t think so, but she took advice from Lexa again and again, and she just – she doesn’t know. Doesn’t know what that says about her, that she’s so easily swayed.

Doesn’t know what it means that she did so much to save her people, but became _ruthless_ when it came to protecting him, to keeping him safe.

She never stopped caring, she knows that. But she thinks she cares too much, too much about him, too much about what they think of her, and she can’t bear it, she just can’t. 

But she’s bearing it now, anyway. Far, far away from them, she can still feel their judgment, their disdain at her choices. Their fear at what she’s become.

It makes her want to move faster, get even farther away, but she doesn’t know how to do that.

\--

She settles near the river. It is deep in the winter, now, she thinks, the snow coming fast and furious at times. She has built herself a small shelter, and if it doesn’t completely keep the wind away, it keeps her warm enough that she can sleep at night.

She’s still getting nightmares, and they’re keeping her up, so sleeping is mostly out of the question. Instead, she stays huddled in her furs, draws on the pages of an old book from Mount Weather. She draws Maya, draws Jasper’s face when he looked at her. She tears that out, feeds it to the fire. Tears stream down her face again, and she hides under her blankets, trying to drown out the look of betrayal, of _disgust_ on his face.

She can bear so many things, but she is struggling so very much to bear the loss of her people. She has lost them all over again, even before she got them back, and it is because of her, because of her choices, her malice, her anger. 

She never thinks about her determination, her own sacrifice, just of her loss, her shame, endlessly torturing her.

Still, it is quiet where she is. She hears wolves sometimes, she thinks. It is a haunting sound, and it makes her sad, listening to their mournful cries. They live together, die together. Their animal lives seem very simple, and she’s envious, after a fashion.

She hunts, stores her kills high in the trees away from predators. She updates her med kit whenever she can, tries to avoid anything that might make her sick.

She knows that her existence, however established it may seem, is still precarious here, and however tortured she feels, she isn’t ready to give it up yet.

The possibility of going home drives her and taunts her at the same time. 

She never again wants to see the disgust in Octavia’s eyes, the betrayal in Jasper’s, the sadness in Monty’s. She doesn’t even really want to see the forgiveness in Bellamy’s. 

She’s earned the looks from everyone else. She has earned nothing from him.

\--

When she’s feeling particularly down on herself, she thinks about his parting words, her own words given back to her. The fact that he thinks that he can bear the burden with her.

He has no idea the choices she’s made, and she’s so, so ashamed by her decisions and their consequences.

She knows, for him, for his life, that she’d make them all over again. And she’s swamped by a wave of shame for being weak, for sacrificing the lives, the _happiness_ of everyone for this one man.

She can’t think about that too seriously, she decides, because that is a whole can of worms that she doesn’t understand, and the chances are good that Octavia has told him everything and he will know the horrible choices she’s made, the ones made in his name, the ones in which he is in no way complicit. He will see her for what she is: the handmaiden of death.

If she thought she had become death when the first bomb exploded, it is nothing compared to what she is now, and the thought makes her sick.

She always thought she was meant to heal, to create, to _produce_. She does none of these things. She takes, and takes, and takes, and when only the hull of people is left, only then is she satisfied.

It is the middle of the night, but she stomps out of her shelter and sits in the cold, desolate night, and for the first time, she wishes Death would come take her, too. She’s not sure how to stop feeling like this, but that seems like a pretty surefire way.

She does nothing, though. Takes no action, just sits quietly.

She supposes that even a glimmer of hope, the dimmest possibility of redemption makes it worth living here, and isn’t why they were sent here in the first place?

\--

She perhaps takes her hunting a little too seriously after that, accepting her role in Death and appropriating it for her own. She wraps herself in what she’s become, and she hunts, and hunts, and hunts.

She has little else to do with her time, really, and though it is deep in the winter, she is able to hone her tracking skills. The first time she takes down a deer, she is nearly delirious with delight, knowing she will have enough for herself for several weeks.

It is then that she begins to wonder about Camp Jaha again, to wonder if they have enough to eat.

Her camp is several hours walk from there, but she begins going every so often, leaving frozen meat where she left the blankets. 

She looks at the walls, sees the reinforcements being made, and turns away.

\--

_You have only to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves_

She sees them, one day while she’s out hunting. She’s up in a tree as soon as she hears feet. She hasn’t encountered any Grounders out here, but she’s taking no chances. She’s several miles from her camp, and she doesn’t want to lead anyone to it, so she scrambles up the first tree she sees.

She’s got her spear ready in case it’s reapers, but she suspects, based on the quietness of the footfalls, that it’s someone unaffected by drug-induced madness.

When she looks down, she sees a familiar shock of long, dark hair, followed by a large, dark-skinned man. It’s Lincoln and Octavia, and she’s never been so glad that she hid.

“I don’t see anything, Lincoln. We’ve been out for days, and we haven’t seen any game. It’s time to go home.” Octavia’s voice is like a whiplash along Clarke’s heart, and it takes all her willpower not to gasp at the familiarity of her voice.

“We’re right near the river. There’s going to be something along here.” He responds, his voice low.

“I’m not really sure why we’re out here, to be honest. We haven’t needed game in weeks with what Bellamy’s been bringing in.”

“He wants to make sure we have enough in case of a storm. I’ve told him it isn’t uncommon for a serious, late blizzard. And – “ Lincoln hesitates.

“What?” Octavia snaps.

“I think he’s tired of you worrying about him. He wants you to be your own person.”

“I am being my own person. And if he would stop _wallowing_ , I might stop worrying.” Clarke’s heart contracts at the tension in Octavia’s voice.

“He’s coping, O. He’s doing exactly what he was told to do, and more. None of us is the same after the Mountain, not even you.” Lincoln’s voice is sure and soothing, and Clarke suddenly misses his steady presence, the certainty of knowing where she stood with him, in spite of everything.

She hears a sniffle, and her heart cracks in two. “He came out alive, and I thought everything would be fine. Instead, I feel like he’s withering away, and I _hate her_ for it.”

Clarke hears rustling below, sees Lincoln gather Octavia into his arms. She feels her own heart breaking. They were supposed to be better off without her, all of them. She doesn’t know how to accept that she is responsible for more pain, and she wants, so desperately, to not be the source of Octavia’s feelings of betrayal at every turn.

She watches them move off into the dusk, but she sits in her tree for hours, until night falls, thinking.

\--

She doesn’t know how to go back, is the thing, and she still doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to face what she’s caused, both during the war, and by leaving. It’s all too much. She doesn’t want people to look to her for leadership anymore, doesn’t want looks of awe, of pity, even of happiness. She doesn’t want to be the reason that anyone lives or dies, is happy or sad. She wants to find a way to just be, to simply exist within the universe, independent of the actions of others.

She’s being naïve, and she knows it. The realization is sudden, and it occurs when she’s sketching the river. What she wants is completely and utterly naïve, and she laughs humorlessly at the realization, her breath ghosting into the night sky. She might have wanted exactly the same thing on the Ark, but she never would have achieved it, and thinking she can achieve it here is even more naïve.

She’s already not separate from the others. She’s trying, in her way, to provide for them from afar; she hasn’t even really separated herself all that much. She can only assume that he has told them not to look for her, because she is easy to find. She went to the most obvious places first, and no one found her. Octavia and Lincoln needed only to look up to find her, even in her more removed spot.

She tells herself she will give herself several more weeks, and then she will find a way to go home.

\--

Once she gives herself the deadline, she allows herself to think of him, to think of him often.

She tells herself that she is trying to prepare herself, prepare herself for his joy upon seeing her, his reluctance, his anger.

She’s very, very afraid that everything she tries to prepare herself for will not be enough.

Still, she thinks of him, the warmth of his hands on her back, her shoulder. The strength of his gaze on her, the compassion in his eyes when he first looked at her outside the gate. She fills herself with thoughts of him, trying to shore herself up against the possible futures of him, the very real fears she has of seeing the others again.

What she really doesn’t want is a big spectacle, but she doesn’t know how to avoid that.

_These are all things you should have thought of before you left_ , she thinks to herself when her patience wears thin.

She hunts some more, freezes more meat. She can’t salt anything, doesn’t have a supply, and hasn’t built a smokehouse. She freezes what she can, packs it up in the furs she’s been keeping, sewing together. She ties everything into her pack, puts her book and her pencils on top, and she leaves her shelter.

She looks at it one last time, thinks that maybe she’ll come back someday. Hopes she won’t. 

\--

She doesn’t go back right away, but strangely enough, the decision to return seems to have lifted the weight from her that she’s been carrying for months now. 

She’s made it through the winter, and she’s not really sure she expected to, or even wanted to, but she has, and she finds that everything is brighter on the other side. She sometimes feels like she’s been living in monochrome since she left, and the colors are suddenly strong and bright, and if she doesn’t feel joy, she feels alive, and she didn’t know that she hadn’t been feeling that way until now, but she’s almost giddy with the realization.

She walks for days, making camp each night, and she knows that she could be back by now, but she’s drawing everything as she goes: the crocuses, the trees, the sun as it sets, and she is _relieved_.

She is carrying so much still, but the possibility of going _home_ , to her people, the people she loves, seems to be helping her bear the burden. She’s not sure if she would have felt this way if she’d gone into Camp Jaha when they made it back, but she feels it now, and it is an elixir, a balm to her soul.

And then, the storm comes. She recalls the conversation she overheard between Lincoln and Octavia several weeks prior, and she realizes with some horror that this was exactly what he was describing, and she’s caught out in the open.

She tries not to panic, takes stock of where she is, and where she could go. She has food and water, but she has no shelter, and if this is going to be a long storm, she has to find shelter. She knows there isn’t a bunker in the area, and the dropship is in the other direction. It is with dawning horror that she realizes she’s going to have to try and take shelter in the forest, try and build herself something in the next hours, in the worsening storm, if she wants to survive.

She’s only just realized how much her own life means to her, how little she wants Death as a companion now. She’s also realizing that she’s going to fight to keep it that way.

She walks steadily, if slowly, into the forest. She can feel the snow collecting in her hair, weighing it down and getting her head wet and cold. She’s starting to shiver through her furs, and she feels the beginnings of fear crawling through her veins.

By the time she finds a spot that is reasonably sheltered from the snow and the wind, it has been several hours, she is damp, and her teeth are chattering. She finds a grove of young pine trees, and they are short enough that they’ve created a small grotto. There are pine needles on the ground that are mostly dry, and if there’s nothing for her to build a fire with, she thinks she’ll be cold, but okay, with her furs.

It is late in the night when she begins to wonder if she was wrong, if she’s going to make it at all, and suddenly she is desperate to make it back to Camp Jaha, to see her people again, bitterness and hostility and all. She wants to see them again so much it literally hurts in her bones. She’s shaking under her furs, and all she can think of is Bellamy’s face, how desperately she wants to see him, hold his face in her hands, know that he is okay.

She has survived so long, and all she wants is to survive this storm and go _home_. There is something there, and it is now, after months of denying it, fearing it, ignoring it, that she wants to grasp it with both hands and never let it go. She needs to know if it’s still there, and she can only know that if she makes it through the night.

She listens to the wind rustling the trees around her, thinks about what he offered her, thinks about losing him, finding him, and sacrificing him in the name of her people. Getting him back was a gift, one that she couldn’t fully accept in light of her guilt. It had been so easy, she thinks, after Finn, to just shut down, to deny herself even the familiarity of their shared leadership, to bury herself and set her heart on fire, so she wouldn’t feel the agony and the guilt of her decisions. She had good reasons, she knows, to send Bellamy to the Mountain, but she also knows a little of what it cost him, and knows that if she knew the full truth of what he endured then, she might crumble under the added strain.

She thought if she got them all back, it would be enough. That she wouldn’t bear the weight of so many lives, that she could let it fall down around her, but as she’s considering her sins in light of a possible death, she thinks that she could never have given up the weight she’s been carrying. Surrendered it temporarily, perhaps, to a companion, who shouldered it not by choice but through obligation, through trust, through dedication.

She has left him with her burden, and that alone is enough to wrench her heart. It also hardens her resolve to survive: she must take her sins back, bear the weight of her responsibilities. She can’t be weak any longer.

\--

The sky lightens in the morning, and it’s still snowing, flakes small and stinging, and it’s bitterly cold now, but she’s still alive. She doesn’t really want to leave her grotto, but she’s worried that if she doesn’t try and find some firewood for a fire, she won’t make it through a second night. Still, she thinks, anything she tries to burn right now might not catch, might just produce smoke and attract animals, people, if there are any out in the open. 

The fear is still simmering in her veins, but it’s humming alongside frustration. She’s close, _so close_ to being home, and she wants to be there _now_. 

Still, she forces herself to limit herself to moving around the grotto, trying to keep her body temperature up without exerting herself too much. She can’t sketch; the pages are already damp, and she doesn’t want to risk any of her drawings. She walks through the grotto, thinking quietly to herself, and when it gets dark again, she draws herself into her blankets, tries to calm the shaking of her body. She wants to sleep, but she’s afraid of hypothermia.

Still, she’s so tired, and she drifts off temporarily, only to wake up hours later, still shivering. The snow has stopped, she realizes, and the world is blanketed in quiet.

She thinks she loves the winter, for the silence and peace it brings. Her head, her body – they all soften in the snow, relaxing into the quiet surrounding her, and if she can’t find it at any other time, she is grateful for it now, as she begins her final leg home.

\--

She stands out of range of the gates for hours. The snow has started again, very softly, and there is a tailwind that seems to be urging her to move. Still, she can’t quite make herself do it yet, can’t quite muster the courage to move forward into the open plains in front of the gate. She’s afraid to expose herself, although she’s not quite sure to what.

She waits until it’s almost dark, thinks about staying another night outside the walls. Decides she’s being a coward, and frankly, it’s snowing harder again, and her entire body feels rattled from the last couple of days of shivering. She needs to sleep somewhere dry.

She walks out into the open, and when she gets within range of the gate, she puts her hands up. She’s made a bow for herself, taught herself to shoot, if not with excellent accuracy, then with enough accuracy to bring down game. She’s got the bow and arrows and her spear strapped to her back, and her gun at her hip. She’s wearing heavy furs, and her pack adds an extra layer of bulk over them. She hasn’t looked in the water in months, has no idea what she looks like, but she doubts she looks like the woman who left six months ago, and she’s not taking any chances that they will kill her as they did Anya. 

Her hood is back so her trademark hair is exposed, but still, someone yells at her from the ramparts: “Stop there! State your name and your business!”

She wants to sigh in exasperation, but she breathes quietly instead, says “Clarke Griffin. Returning home.”

The person squints out at her, says, “Don’t move.” He yells to someone else on the wall, who goes running off. When they come back, Miller is trailing behind them, and she can see the change in his face when he sees her. It isn’t exactly pleasure that she sees in his face, but he looks at the guard who stopped her and clearly indicates to open the gate. 

“Come on in, Clarke,” he shouts.

Clarke looks at him, nods, walks forward. She suddenly feels nauseated, her legs shaky, and her breaths coming too quickly. She stops for a minute, hunches over, breathes. The gate is fully open when she looks back up, and she starts forward again.

She’s not sure what to expect, really, but there’s a line of people in front of her, and no one’s really smiling, but Raven is there, using her cane again; her mother is there, Kane is there, Monty and Miller and Harper and Monroe – and Octavia and Bellamy and Lincoln are missing. Dread settles in her stomach, but she keeps walking forward, one foot in front of the other until she’s standing in front of Raven and her mother, and both of them are reaching out for her, and Raven has maybe punched her in the arm, but she’s also hugging her, and Clarke is dry-eyed, but _so relieved_ that they are here, and they are well.

\--

She asks Raven later, about Bellamy and Octavia. Raven looks at her askance, says, “They’re out hunting. Lincoln’s with them.”

Clarke nods, swallows. “How – how are they?”

Raven sighs, turns to face her. “Clarke, you left without a word to anyone but Bellamy. He’s about as good as can be expected, considering you handed your responsibilities off to him and ran away. He’s you, during the war, but less ruthless. He’s not himself. I’m not sure Octavia’s ever going to stop being angry at this point, and Lincoln’s trying to hold her together. So really, they’re about as good as you’d expect.”

Clarke winces, feels the knife in her heart twist a little bit. “I guess I deserved that.”

Raven looks at her steadily. “It’s not about what you deserve, Clarke; stop being such a martyr. It’s about the truth. You decided you couldn’t handle the consequences of your actions. I’m not going to pretend to understand – I don’t understand what it’s like to make the choices you’ve made. But you had people who were willing to help you, who stood shoulder to shoulder with you and made those decisions with you, and you turned your back on them. Do you think they haven’t still been bearing that burden? Do you think that you could simply waltz away and take their pain with you? It doesn’t work like that, and you know that!” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to yell at you. But it seems pretty unfair that you got to take off and deal with everything, and the rest of us are trying to piece ourselves back together and carry on like everything’s normal.”

“I just – I couldn’t, Raven. I couldn’t look at Jasper every day and see him accusing me of Maya’s death. I couldn’t look at Octavia any more and see her death at TonDC, couldn’t see her disdain for making that decision. I couldn’t look at Lincoln and see the guard I shot to protect him.” Clarke’s voice is rising in pitch, and she’s trying to control it, but her breath is coming in gasps, and she can’t stop. “Do you know that I know exactly how many people I’ve killed? I counted every single one of them at Mount Weather. I know how many were there when I closed the dropship doors, I know what it feels like to stab someone for mercy, and I just – “ She breaks off, bending over. She’s gasping, wheezing, and she’s panicking, she knows, and suddenly Raven’s there, and Wick is on her other side, and they’re lowering her down to the ground, Raven’s drawing circles on her back.

“Clarke, slow down. You have to breathe.”

“I – can’t,” she gasps out, and suddenly Raven is behind her, breathing against her back, and it reminds her of what it feels like to have Bellamy behind her, his solidness, and she gasps harder until she feels Raven’s intake of breath behind her, starts trying to breathe in tandem with her, and she’s being rocked back and forth, and finally, finally she’s able to breathe again. Still, there are dark spots at the edge of her vision, and the last thing she sees is Raven and Wick sharing a glance before she’s picked up, and gently deposited on something soft.

\--

_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

When she wakes up, she is warm for the first time in days, and she is under honest-to-god blankets, and she hears the whisper of voices around the corner from her.

“Jesus, Bellamy, she had a panic attack first thing after walking through the doors. I have no idea how she’s survived out there this whole time, much less how she’s been _providing_ for us. It’s like she’s atoning, but she apparently doesn’t think she’s done enough because she hasn’t been here ten minutes before she’s asking about you, and I assumed that she was back because she was ready, but god if she isn’t as broken as the rest of us.” Raven’s voice is a quiet whisper, but Clarke can hear it clear as day, and she isn’t stung by her words, exactly, but she feels like she shouldn’t be hearing this, doesn’t _want_ to hear it.

“What do you want me to say, Raven? I was out, and she made it clear that she doesn’t want my support or forgiveness. She’s here, I’m glad, but I can’t help her any more than anyone else can.” His voice is tired, she can tell. It’s more gravelly than usual, and he sounds worn to the bone. 

“That’s just it, though. You think that, but I get the feeling that she dragged herself back here for _you_. She’s happy to see me, she accepted Abby’s hug, but she looked around with this broken look on her face like she was looking for someone, and when she came to talk to me, it was only about you. You can do what you want with that information, but she’s _here_ , Bellamy. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I _wanted_ for her not to leave in the first place. I _wanted_ not to run the camp by myself, worrying about her every day. I don’t know what you want from me now. If she can’t fix herself, I sure as hell can’t fix her.” His voice is quieter, but more intense, and every word he says breaks her heart a little more. She didn’t really think she could come back and everything would be okay, but – well, she thought that he would be here for her, and it’s hitting her all at once that she should never have expected that, never would have _asked_ that of him.

She hears him mumble something before he shuffles in her direction, and she slows her breathing, pretends to be asleep. She senses him stopping near her, feels as he gently brushes her hair away from her face before he moves away again.

\--

She stays with Raven and Wick for another day or two before she leaves, feeling like she’s intruding on their space. Raven walks her into Abby’s office, where she asks for a tent. Abby looks at her, hesitates, then offers her a small room in a section with the remaining delinquents. Clarke opens her mouth to decline, but Raven pinches her arm, and she accepts instead.

She accepts a blanket she recognizes from Mount Weather without comment and wanders through the halls toward her room. There isn’t a mattress, but her pile of furs has suited her just fine for the past several months, and she’s happy to sleep on it again. She spreads it out, drapes the blanket over the top, places her book and her pencils next to it. She honestly wants to close the door and go back to sleep, but it’s midday, and that doesn’t seem like a particularly auspicious start to being back at camp.

She walks out, closes the door, moves down the hallways. Pretends it isn’t the most difficult thing she’s done, pretends it doesn’t feel like running a gauntlet to get out of her own quarters.

It is the next day that she sees him slipping out of the room across from hers that she realizes how close they are, and her heart starts beating overtime, hammering in her chest to get out. She is sketching in her bed early in the morning, and she hears his door open and close, sees him from under her eyelashes as he glances toward her and moves away. She doesn’t want to start sleeping with her door closed, didn’t last night, but now – she has the sudden and unexpected urge to hide from him, feels like she might need to start closing her door.

She sees none of the others that day, or for the whole week. She locks herself in the medbay, starts re-learning the organization, treats wounds from the wall. None of her patients are the remaining hundred; she gets some smiles from her patients, some skepticism, but few of them say anything, and it’s a tremendous relief to her tired heart.

\--

She makes it through one day, then the next. Meals are the worst; she can sit with Raven and Wick, but it’s hard to ignore the others around her, and it’s hard to know what to do. She came back for _them_ , but her skittishness hasn’t been tamed in the months away. If anything, it’s worse, and she doesn’t remember how to reach out to the people she once intrinsically trusted. Monty is one of the few to come sit with her right away, although there’s space between them where there didn’t use to be any. She can see Monty glancing at Miller across the mess hall, but she can also see when Miller makes the decision to stay where he’s sitting with the Guard, and she ignores the small splinter in her heart at seeing Miller, who stayed with her when she closed the dropship doors, removing himself from associating with her.

Still, when she sees him days later, he offers her a small nod, and she thinks his distance has less to do with his trust in her, and more to do with the company he’s keeping.

Octavia sweeps through camp one day, Lincoln in her wake, and when she spots Clarke from a long distance off, Clarke can literally see her muscles lock. She stands still, waiting for the moment when Octavia comes charging across camp, yelling and possibly even swinging her fists.

She doesn’t, and Clarke is embarrassed, but grateful that she doesn’t have to deal with a public shaming. Still, she can see the frown on Octavia’s face, and she knows she hasn’t gotten off Scot-free. 

Lincoln stands behind Octavia, keeps looking at Clarke even after Octavia has moved on, and he, too, offers a nod. Clarke raises one of her hands, before giving him a small smile. She doesn’t know what to expect from Lincoln in the future, but she appreciates his quiet acknowledgement.

Raven is a steady, if silent presence at Clarke’s side during meals, and Clarke is relieved by her presence. They are different than they were before Finn’s death. Raven is both more solemn and more content. She can see the delight in her friend’s eyes when Wick is around, but she also recognizes the steel in her every move that showed up when Clarke returned to camp with Finn’s blood coating her hands.

They don’t talk about it, but Clarke recognizes their quiet truce, remembers that Raven never stopped supporting her, horrible decision after horrible decision, and she squeezes her friend’s hand in thanks before leaving the table one night. Raven looks up at her, surprised, before going back to an animated conversation with Wick.

Clarke wanders through camp, passing through shadows and avoiding the fires. She knows who stays around the fires, and it is the people she doesn’t want to talk to, the people whose reactions are unpredictable.

She feels like a coward in ways she never felt when she lived outside the walls. She survived singlehandedly for months, but she thinks maybe that’s the problem. Living alone is easy when you’re trying to hide from your sins. Being around the people you committed those acts for demands absolution or answers every second of every day, and she’s ashamed. She came back to be with them, but she’s still not ready to face the consequences of her actions, both those during and after the war, and so she avoids, avoids, avoids.

She spends so much time avoiding that she hasn’t even said two words to Bellamy until she bumps into him one evening. The solidness of his chest under her hands has her knowing who it is even before she raises her eyes to meet his, and it is with a sudden flinch that she takes her hands away from him, feels the muscles in her abdomen contract.

They don’t speak, but their eyes lock, and his are haunted, tentative as they meet hers, and suddenly she can see the burden he has been bearing on her behalf, the horrible curse she left him with. The duty he’s shouldered, along with his residual pain, and she feels sick to her stomach. He has lost weight, and his cheekbones stand out in sharp relief on his face. She wants nothing more than to trace them, cup his face in her hands, and she has to ball her hands in fists to keep them at her sides.

He must find whatever he’s looking for in her face, because his eyelashes are brushing his cheeks as he finally blinks, and moves aside to let her pass. “Have a good evening, Clarke.”

She’s so shocked at his words, at hearing his voice after all this time, that she stands stock still until he moves away.

\--

It is another week before she encounters him again, and the next time she sees him, he’s pouring blood from a wound in his side. Her hands are shaking, but Jackson is on lunch, and her mother is nowhere to be found, and Octavia is looking at her with something like disdain, and she can do this. The fact that it’s Bellamy makes it more difficult, but it doesn’t change what she needs to do, only makes it more important.

She douses her hands and his wound in moonshine, and a surge of relief washes through her when he passes out with a groan. She takes a steadying breath before she turns to Octavia. “If he wakes up, I need you to hold him down. Can you do that?”

Octavia nods, resuming her stance next to Bellamy while Clarke heats a knife. The technology that came down with the Ark means that sometimes they don’t have to cauterize wounds like this, but this is what Clarke has become familiar with in their time on the ground, and she’s prepared to do this now.

It’s ultimately a good thing that Octavia stays, because Bellamy shouts and writhes while Clarke applies the knife, and Octavia is holding him down with a grim look on her face, her knuckles tense and white where they grab his shoulder. 

Clarke has done this a dozen times, and it is only this time that she wants to throw up, physically has to choke down bile to keep going. When it’s done, she cleans her hands again, cleans the knife and sets it aside. When she looks up, Octavia has a considering look on her face. She’s washed the grounder paint off her face since the Mountain fell, and it’s easier for Clarke to read the reluctant respect in her eyes; Clarke is surprised to see it there, is even more surprised when Octavia thanks her, and asks her to let her know when Bellamy wakes before she walks out of the medbay.

\--

He wakes up an hour or so later, and she isn’t sitting right next to him, but she’s moving slowly through the medbay, cleaning and sorting things while she waits for him to come back. She spins around when he clears his throat, and she’s there with water, letting him have a few sips before taking it away.

“How are you feeling?” She asks. She checks his pupil dilation, tries to keep her hands from tangling together. She is not his partner, not his sister, not even really his friend now. Her concern is only warranted insofar as it is related to her role as a healer, and no further.

“I’ve felt better,” he grits out.

She hesitates. “What happened?”

“One of the kids slashed at me instead of a boar,” he says, rolling his eyes.

Clarke raises an eyebrow. “One of which kids?”

“He already got a talking to from O, Princess. And it’s one of the Ark kids, not one of the delinquents. They know better.”

She can feel the blood drain from her face at the nickname. It feels like it’s been years since she heard it, and she can see the chagrin register on his face when he uses it. It’s too familiar, too comfortable. They are not those people anymore, she thinks. She has not earned the right to familiarity from him; she gave up that privilege when she left, and she thinks with desperation that she shouldn’t still be having realizations like this, that they shouldn’t still _hurt_ , but her heart feels like it’s cracking again, and it’s all she can do to keep breathing normally.

She turns around abruptly, trying to find something to keep calm. “You should keep resting. It’s going to be a while before you can get up, so you might as well sleep. Shore up your energy to fight off any potential infection.”

She can’t see his face, purposefully doesn’t turn around to look at him, but she can hear him rustling under the sheets, hears his breathing even out, and it’s only then that she takes a deep breath, steadies her hands.

She doesn’t know how to do this. Doesn’t know how to start again, can’t even look him in the eye.

\--

She thinks about leaving several more times. She keeps her bag packed by the door to her room. No one can see it but her, so no one knows her inner thoughts, but she can see Raven watching her carefully, waiting for her to bolt again.

It’s uncomfortable to be in camp, uncomfortable to have eyes on her all the time. Her skin crawls under the constant supervision, and she feels like she hears whispers about her, behind her back. She isn’t sure if they’re real, or if she’s imagining the judgment of the people around her, but she can feel her shoulders creeping up to her ears, and she longs to be gone.

Still, she stays. She sits quietly with Raven, accepts her self-imposed ostracism. She isn’t sure what else to do but keep her head down. 

She wants to not feel like handing out individual apologies, wants to stop feeling like this is an exercise in self-flagellation, atoning for her sins through her sheer presence, but – she doesn’t even know where to begin, not even with the one person who was willing to forgive her.

\--

She’s the one there when he comes back for a check-up. She smoothes her hand over the red flesh, feeling for heat or swelling, trying to ignore the ache it inspires in her. She longs for human touch, doesn’t feel like she is allowed.

“It looks good, Bellamy. You can go back to normal work, if you haven’t already.” She doesn’t mean to tease him, but it slips out, and she looks up at him to catch the small smile playing at his lips. She sees it, takes it in, and it feels like something small unfurls in her chest. There are too many things between them for her to feel like it’s natural, but her awe at his face makes her feel, for just a moment, that everything is okay.

\--

Her feelings of relief are short-lived when she overreaches her self-imposed boundaries. She feels like she needs to extend an olive branch to him, and so she tries sitting next to him at the fire one night. He’s alone, and the fire looks inviting for once, instead of forbidding, so she sits down next to him quietly, looks over at him. She doesn’t really know how to begin to talk to him properly; she hasn’t been involved in camp details in months, has purposefully distanced herself from those duties, but it’s most of what they had in common for the time they spent together.

She looks away, glancing toward the night sky. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“For what?” He asks.

“For your forgiveness. I – I couldn’t take it then. I couldn’t let you share what I’d done. TonDC was mine, and mine alone. Sending you to Mount Weather was mine alone. But having you offer meant everything.”

He looks at her askance. “Do you think I don’t bear that weight? Just because you left doesn’t mean I don’t bear it, Clarke. You leaving just meant that we had to bear it separately.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t mean-“

He’s agitated now, his hands scrubbing restlessly at his face. There are lines there where there weren’t when she left, and she can see, suddenly, the difference in his age from the rest of them. “It doesn’t matter what you meant to do. Who do you think woke up Harper every time she had a nightmare? Who do you think bore the brunt of Jasper’s anger? Who answered questions, for weeks, about where you’d gone and when you’d come back? I had to do all of those things by myself, and all I wanted, every day, was to have someone, to have _you_ there with me, to help me carry it. I wanted to be able to talk to you about it. Not Octavia, not Miller. _You_. But you made your choice and you left, and I’m glad that it helped you, but you can’t just come back and expect everything to be fine.”

She looks at him then, her eyes glassy, shame written on her face. He’s right – she didn’t expect this. Didn’t expect him to suddenly not understand, to have run out of patience for her, run out of tolerance.

When he sees her face, his heart wrenches a little, though he tamps down on it. His anger may not be justified, but she gave him a responsibility, and he’s done the best he can. He’s shouldered the burden she carried so she didn’t have to, but for her to act like she’s been carrying the weight of their choices alone is ludicrous, and he doesn’t have patience for her self-deprecation. He wants to reach out to her, grasp her shoulder even, just to let her know that he’s angry, but she’s still forgiven.

Instead, he turns and walks away.

\--

They don’t talk for several days after that, and it’s a strain on her heart.

She looks at her pack everyday, doesn’t see him when he leaves every morning. Suddenly, he’s absent everywhere. Octavia is still around, and so is Lincoln, but Bellamy is gone.

She wishes, very desperately, that she could ask someone about where he is, but she doesn’t want to bother Raven, doesn’t want her pitying looks, and she thinks, for all that she saw some resolution in Octavia’s face when she patched Bellamy up, that they have too far to go for her to be accessible.

And, just as soon as he disappeared, he’s back, but he’s not alone.

Lexa is here, along with a number of other Grounders, and as wave after wave of emotion washes through Clarke, he turns to look at her, and she doesn’t even think, just runs.

\--

She can’t hide forever, of course, and she is eventually summoned to the Council. She wants nothing to do with this meeting, can’t stifle her feelings of betrayal long enough to think about the possibility of an alliance with the Grounders.

She sits ramrod straight through the Council meeting, makes eye contact with no one, and turns to go when it’s finished. She has retained nothing, and all she wants is the minimal comfort of her blankets and the total darkness of her room.

Instead, she hears, “Clarke kom Skaikru,” and without even thinking about it, she turns around so that she is face to face with Lexa. Her gut twists, and she can feel a snarl starting to form on her face.

“How may I be of service, Commander?”

Lexa searches her face, and when she meets Clarke’s eyes again, they are soft. “Clarke, I never meant to betray you.”

“Oh really?” she asks. “I’m not sure how you define betrayal, but I certainly think using our forces and our inside man to get your people out and leaving mine to rot counts as betrayal.” She’s starting to shake, the fury pounding in her veins, and she feels childish and out of control, but she can’t seem to stop herself now that she’s started. “I _trusted_ you. I did _horrible things_ at your suggestion, in the name of getting our people out, and I was left standing there with blood on my hands, only to incur _more debt_ , more blood taken.” She doesn’t realize there are tears coursing down her face until she scrubs at her face and her hands come away wet. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you, Commander.”

She turns to go, but Lexa stops her. “You made the choices a leader makes, Clarke. That is who you are. You cannot stop being that just because you don’t like it, just because it’s hard. And giving that position to another is a cowardly way out.”

Clarke turns to see her sweeping out of the hall, her cape swirling behind her.

\--

She goes to bed that night and can’t sleep. For the first time in months, she sits outside, huddled in her furs and counting the stars. She misses solitude, misses self-reliance, however lean it was. She doesn’t _want this_. She never did.

There is a quiet thump beside her, and she looks up to see Bellamy settling next to her.

“I would see you, you know. When you left things.” He offers the words to her as a gift. She turns her head in surprise, her lips parted.

“I know what you look like, Clarke, even when you’re hiding. You could have your hood up, have dyed your hair, be covered in Grounder paint, and I’d still have known it was you. Who else would have left us those things?” There’s a ghost of a smirk playing at his lips, and she’s never been so relieved to see his arrogance, hidden though it is.

His words ease through her veins, soothing her anger. When she looks back at him, his gaze is on her, and it’s soft, understanding. She shivers, though the night is not that cool, and her furs are warm. She’s not sure she deserves this, whatever it is, but she can’t find it in her to turn away from him, to deny the balm of his words.

\--

She sees Lexa again, before the Grounders leave. She is a softer version of her previous self; the war-paint is gone for the moment, and she wears less armor than she did when Clarke last saw her. Clarke has been working in the medbay while the Grounders have been visiting; she’s assumed her mother has largely been responsible for negotiating with them, and she wants nothing to do with them. She’s a little embarrassed by her outburst when she last talked to Lexa; she feels chagrined, but also justified in her anger, and it’s an uncomfortable pill to swallow.

“Clarke.” Lexa’s voice is quiet against the steel walls of the Ark. She doesn’t want to look up, doesn’t want to meet her eyes, but she does, in spite of her hesitation. Lexa is looking at her softly, and Clarke feels, just briefly, the spark she felt when their lips met months ago. 

“I know you’re angry, Clarke, and while I don’t regret my decision, I respect that it was dishonorable to our alliance. I offer my apology.” Lexa is formal, her stance rigid, and it is in this moment that Clarke is reminded that they are not far apart in age, that Lexa has been making horrible decisions for years to survive, has been living with them for as long. She thinks, finally, that she might understand the decisions that would drive someone to shut themselves off from everyone else.

Isn’t that exactly what she’d done?

“How do you do it?” she asks, softly.

“Do what?”

“Live with it. You betrayed us, and we survived, but you’ve been doing this for so long. How does it not weigh you down?”

“We do what we have to do to survive, Clarke. You know this. I look at the people I have saved, those that I have protected, and it is enough. They look at me and see strength. You made choices that any Commander would deem necessary. Your people haven’t reconciled themselves to those choices, to the harsh reality of survival, to its cost. You haven’t either. You may be angry at me, Clarke, but your true anger is at yourself. A true leader doesn’t let guilt drag them down and outweigh their victories.”

“I let people _burn_. I _killed children_ in the name of my people. In _his name_ ,” She hisses. “How am I not supposed to feel guilt for those lives? For making choices that my people would never agree with?” 

“You must ask him if he agrees with what you are doing to yourself in the name of penance.” She looks at Clarke shrewdly. “Anyone can see you are tearing yourself apart, and that it is obvious even when you are living with people who can take care of you.” She tilts her head. “What must you have been like on your own, Clarke. It is a wonder that you survived, thinking like this.”

Clarke wants to slap her, can feel the itch in her hand. “I didn’t want to die,” she mutters.

“Then _live_ , Clarke. You told me life was about more than surviving. Only you can make it so.” She looks at Clarke with soft eyes, full of understanding for the first time in their conversation. Clarke holds her ground as Lexa walks toward her, feels the brush of Lexa’s lips against her cheek, watches her go.

It isn’t redemption that Clarke feels, isn’t strong enough for that. But she thinks it might be the first stitch in her heart, patching her soul back together.

\--

_Meanwhile the world goes on_

It is summer suddenly, and the camp is alive in a way she never expected to see. Work is being done on the wall, to allow camp to expand, to make the wall stronger, Monty’s starting test fields of crops, and the youngest Ark survivors are running through camp in the early mornings, whooping as Octavia chases them.

She thinks often about what Lexa said, about what Bellamy would think about her penance. Wants to ask him. Doesn’t. She largely avoids him still, although when she runs into him, they are cordial. No one makes any comments if Clarke watches Bellamy’s back as he walks away, and the same goes for Bellamy as he watches Clarke.

They are largely left to their own devices, both with each other and with others, and it is reassuring to Clarke that, for once, no one wants anything to do with her or her personal life.

\--

It takes her a couple of days, once the weather’s nice, to realize that she hasn’t seen Jasper in several days. They haven’t spoken since she returned, and if it stings, she tries not to think about it too much. And she hasn’t been keeping tabs on everyone (she _hasn’t_ , it’s not her job, at least not anymore), but he’s a major presence in the camp, and when she doesn’t see him, she’s startled. He rarely goes hunting with Bellamy or the other guard members, and Bellamy and Lincoln are both in camp anyway.

She doesn’t particularly want to ask Bellamy about it, and doesn’t want to approach Monty with her concerns either. Monty has been by her side at every meal, but his is largely a silent presence, and she’s been quietly worried about him. Still, she often sees him curled up by the fire with Miller, so she knows he’s spending time with people who aren’t her or Raven. She sees him with Jasper every now and again, but Jasper always has a line between his eyebrows when they interact, and she never saw that before.

So, she doesn’t ask. Her worries make her fidgety, and when she starts rearranging the med bay for the third time, Raven rolls her eyes and her and drags her away.

“There haven’t been any sick folks in weeks, Griffin, and I’m not sure what’s got you all wound up, but you’re driving me crazy. We’re getting out of here.”

Clarke goes to protest, but Raven cuts her off. “No. We’re taking some real soap, we’re going to the river, and we’re getting out of camp.”

It’s when Raven meets her at the gate with Octavia that Clarke starts to balk, feeling like she’s simultaneously intruding and being cornered. 

Still, Raven takes her hand, and Octavia only greets her calmly, and if Clarke’s hackles are still up, she feels less like something’s going to explode than she did before. It’s not necessarily a comfortable silence as they hike to the river, but it’s not tense, and Clarke feels, for the first time in months, like a normal person. Or, as normal as it gets on Earth.

All three of them are sweaty when they reach the river, and Octavia is the first to strip her clothing off and run into the river, yodeling as she goes. Raven grins, but walks all the way to the river, peeling her clothes and brace off only when she’s reached a place where she can ease her way in. 

Clarke fiddles with the laces on her boots, head down and hair hiding her face. She loves these women fiercely; she’s been down here with them, known them for less than a year, but they are everything she would have wanted from female friends as a kid (she never had any, never really had friends besides Wells). Still, she’s betrayed both of them, and she’s reluctant to literally expose herself in front of them, join them in play like everything is normal.

Still, Octavia yells out, “Quit stalling, Clarke! Get in here!” and waves her in, and Clarke can feel a small smile on her face. She pulls her clothing off and jumps in, and the cool water over her skin is a relief. She surfaces with a gasp and revels in the feeling of weightlessness in the water. 

Finally, finally, she feels some of the weight on her shoulders lift off, feels the tension leave her muscles, slowly, and then all at once until she’s smiling, grinning. She treads water for a few minutes before floating to her back and staring at the sky.

And then she feels herself pulled under by an invisible force wrapped around her ankle, and she’s shrieking, inhaling water, and then sputtering when she reaches the surface, wiping water out of her face. She hears cackling behind her, spins around, and splashes Octavia right in the face, and it’s an all-out water fight between the three of them.

Later, when they’re exhausted and lying on the shore, slowly drying off, Octavia says, “I feel like we just did some sort of traditional bonding ritual. It’s a little weird.” She turns her head in Clarke’s direction, and Clarke starts giggling, rolling around until she can’t breathe, listening to the laughter of the other girls around her. It does feel a little weird, she thinks. They’re barely adults, the three of them, but they’ve waged war, blown people up, betrayed each other and come back together, and here they are laughing over a water fight. It is, all of it, absolutely absurd, and Clarke feels helpless to do anything but laugh in its face right now.

Slowly they quiet down, pull themselves off the ground, and get dressed. Clarke’s hair is spiraling around her face in the humidity, and when Octavia offers to braid it, she smiles gratefully, revels in the feeling of fingers deftly pulling at her hair.

Finally, when the sun starts to go down, the three women gather their things and move back to camp, moving through the forest quietly. The air between them is peaceful now, no sign of the tension that sparked between the three of them before, and Clarke feels a tremendous sense of relief. She will never bee free of the things she’s done, but she can carry them, carry the weight of them, and still be supported by the people she loves.

It’s only when they get back to camp that the peace evaporates as Bellamy comes barreling out of the gate, tension in every line of his body. “Where have you _been_?”

Octavia’s face hardens against the sharpness in his voice, bur Raven’s already hissing behind her back, “You didn’t _tell him_?”. Octavia has the decency to look chagrined, but she also looks at Bellamy, and after taking a breath, she says, “We were at the river, taking a break.”

Clarke can feel a flush spreading across her cheeks when Bellamy looks over at her, clear relief written on his face. Octavia rolls her eyes and shoves past Bellamy, Raven in tow.

Bellamy clears his throat and shuffles a little. Clarke can feel her heart turning over in her chest, and she reaches out to him, kisses his cheek. “I’m not leaving again, Bellamy.” She breaks away from him and walks into camp.

\--

_meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes_

It’s several days later that she’s eating lunch that someone drops down next to her. She assumes it’s Raven, at first, but she knows that Raven is supposed to be working on a tower, that when Clarke asked her earlier that day about meals, Raven only shrugged irritably, saying Abby had her working on some stupid project and she had no idea when she’d be done.

It’s with a great deal of shock that she looks up into Jasper’s face. Once she swallows past her shock, she offers him a tentative smile. They haven’t so much as made eye contact in the months since she’s been back, and this is more than she expected, while she’s also trepidatious about what’s coming next.

He doesn’t say anything for a while, so Clarke goes back to eating. She doesn’t feel right starting a conversation with him, doesn’t particularly want to start with an apology that will ring hollow.

“I went to Mount Weather and saw the grave you made,” he finally says. Her head snaps up, and she looks at him. He isn’t looking at her, is looking straight ahead, out the tent doors. She waits, studying the lines on his face. She hasn’t talked to Monty much about what happened in Mount Weather, but she knows they killed Dr. Tsing, knows that they did many things to survive. She sometimes forgets that Jasper and Monty are young, barely sixteen, but she can see it in Jasper’s face now; still, there are already lines where there weren’t any when they landed. He doesn’t wear his goggles now, and he looks weathered. She feels a pang in her heart for the kids they should be, the childhood they all should have had.

He finally turns his head back toward her, catches her studying him. “I can’t forgive you, Clarke. I can’t forgive what you did, but I know why you did it.” He shrugs, turns his head away again. “Thank you for remembering her.”

Clarke nods, not sure if he can even see her. She can feel her chin trembling, doesn’t want to cry in front of him. She swallows past the lump in her throat. She wants so much to reach out to him, but she’s not sure her touch is welcome, and this is already so much better than it’s been that she doesn’t want to push it.

Finally, he pushes back, nods at her, and walks out the tent door.

She takes a deep, heaving breath, blinks back her tears, and goes back to eating. It’s a start, she thinks.

\--

The summer goes on like that, slowly mending relationships, easing back into her place in the camp. It chafes at her, sometimes, being back under her mother’s thumb; there’s definitely a structure and an order to her days that wasn’t there when they lived at the Dropship, or even when they were working toward liberating the forty-seven. She goes to the med bay every day, watches Bellamy walk off to his duty with the Guard, and Raven to the mechanics section. There are things to build, walls to reinforce, and plants to grow.

She helps Monty, sometimes, in the garden. She’s not very good at gardening, she thinks; on her darker days, she still thinks she’s made for killing, rather than nurturing, but the first time something sprouts in a row that she planted, she hugs Monty. The smile on his face is worth every failed attempt she’s made.

As the summer wanes on, it gets warmer and warmer, and soon she finds herself lying on the tables in the medbay, sometimes without her shirt on. It’s a sticky heat, and she goes to the river when she can, but more often she takes whatever clothing she can off, discards it, and lies on the cool metal tables. 

This is how she’s lying, fanning herself with a wide leaf and dreaming of winter, when Bellamy bursts into the medbay with a loud “Clarke!”

She sits bolt upright, reaching for her shirt. She’s wearing her bra, of course, but she’s generally a modest person, and this is a surprise. When she looks over at Bellamy, he’s turned around, a hand clapped over his eyes, and she can just barely tell with his dark tan, that his ears are red. She throws her shirt on, saying “I’m decent, what is it,” with just a touch of irritability.

He turns back around, and yep, he’s blushing. Clarke feels a trickle of satisfaction in her veins, and following headily on that, a wish that he’d kept looking at her. (And _that_ makes her brain do a double-take, and yes, she knew that there was _something_ for Bellamy, but. Well, maybe at least partially it’s the heat.)

“Octavia and Lincoln just came back from visiting the Trigadakru, and we’re being invited to their summer celebration.”

“ _All_ of us?” Clarke asks, a little incredulous. She’s not asking for herself, specifically, but more about the invitation being extended to several hundred Skai Kru.

Bellamy looks at her askance, trying to judge the nature of her question. Whatever he reads in her face, he says, “Yes, all of us. It’s in two weeks, and we’re expected to bring something.”

Clarke shrugs. “Go talk to Monty and Jasper. I can’t bring anything.”

“Well, actually, they asked to have a healer visit, specifically. Someone’s pregnant with twins, and Nyko hasn’t delivered twins before.”

Clarke snorts. “And I have? That’s a job for the Chancellor, not for me.”

“Nyko asked for your assistance. Maybe they’re assuming your mom is going to be busy with the Commander and Indra?” Bellamy shrugs. “All Octavia said was that they asked for you.”

Clarke swallows past her guilt and dread and nods, trying to crack a joke. “Well, if I’m being _summoned_ , I suppose I’d better make an appearance. You will talk to Monty and Jasper, though, right? They can brew something, I think, between now and then.”

Bellamy grins. “That’s a given, princess.”

\--

_over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers_

The festival isn’t held in the shadow of TonDC, which means that the Arkers have to travel much further. Lincoln and Octavia warn them of this in advance, but Clarke is still struck by how long it takes them to reach this village.

The village itself is bigger than TonDC, and it makes sense; they’ve taken many of the former TonDC residents and housed them temporarily, but the village itself is bigger. The Commander’s tent is here, signifying the importance of the festival, and Clarke notes that Octavia and Lincoln are warmly greeted here. Whatever their combined and individual transgressions among the Trigedakru are, they are certainly comfortable among them, Lincoln receiving backslaps along with Octavia.

Clarke, meanwhile, feels like crawling under the nearest rock and having a panic attack. Bellamy is walking just behind her, and Raven and Wick are nearby, but she feels exposed. Never has she realized how noticeable her blonde hair is, how much she sticks out among the swarthy Grounders with their dark hair and dark eyes. 

When she hears the whispers of _Klarke com Skai Kru_ , she feels nausea coil in her stomach. Still, when she meets the eyes of some of the villagers, there isn’t scorn or loathing.

It’s more like admiration.

She glances back at Bellamy in a panic, to find him watching her with a small smile. “You’re a legend, now.”

“For _what_?” She hisses. “Burning down a village?”

“For taking down the Mountain, obviously.” Raven says from her side. “They’ve been fighting it for a hundred years, and you took it down in three weeks. Of course you’re a legend.” Raven offers her a sardonic grin, before moving back to walk with Wick.

She looks back at Bellamy in question. “Hey, don’t look at me. They think I’m cool, but the number of times I’ve heard of you since I started visiting with the Grounders far outnumbers the times I heard about you on the Ark.”

“Bellamy, I let a missile strike TonDC. Don’t they know that?”

“Of course they do, they’re living with the refugees. But legends don’t talk about the horrible decisions people make. They just talk about their glorifying outcome.”

“I guess you’d know,” she mutters, thinking about the number of mythology references she’s heard him make.

\--

She still slinks around the new village, feels vaguely like there should be a target on her back, even if there isn’t. Every person she talks to looks at her with reverence in their eyes, and it somehow makes her feel even more sick. It’s almost a relief to talk to Nyko, who’s been there every step of the way while they’ve been on Earth. He knows exactly the decisions she’s made, and he seems to gruffly overlook them in the name of medical knowledge.

The woman who’s pregnant with twins is in fact very pregnant, so much so that she thinks there’s a possibility they’ll deliver them while she’s in the village. She talks to Nyko in general terms, but she knows he’s delivered more babies than she has (considering she’s delivered none, this doesn’t take much), so when she offers to attend the birth, she says so in the frame of learning from him. He glances at her in surprise, and it’s the first time she thinks that he realizes how young she is. He nods, and says he will call for her when it is time. She grasps the hand of the mother, and walks out.

It’s all pretty overwhelming, so she walks off toward the forest for some air, only to hear someone walking behind her. She looks back, and isn’t at all surprised to see Bellamy following her. She waits for him, reaches out to offer her hand. He raises his eyebrows, but gently grasps her hand in his larger one. She revels in the feel of callouses along his palm, the sheer size of his hand.

She leads him to a log and sits, staring out at the forest. He doesn’t say anything, just waits. Finally, she says, “I didn’t want to be a legend. I actively _don’t_ want to be a legend.”

He laughs, but it’s hollow. “I don’t think we get a choice in the matter. If you listen long enough, it’s not just you. It’s me, it’s Octavia. We’ve changed this world, Clarke, and maybe it’s for the better, but I meant what I said earlier. They have no idea the decisions we’ve made to get here. Or they know, but they don’t think about what it means for someone’s humanity to make those decisions.”

She thinks about it, turning his words over in her head. It is exactly that, she thinks. She’s not sure what kind of human makes those decisions. “My dad would never have made the decisions I have,” she says. “I’m afraid he would be ashamed of me.”

Bellamy turns toward her abruptly. “You shouldn’t be ashamed, Clarke. We’re alive because of some of the decisions we’ve made. At some point, you’ve got to stop being angry at what you’ve done, and look at where we are. We wouldn’t have gotten here without those decisions.”

His fierceness on the subject never fails to surprise her, and she manages to catch his eye for a minute before she shakes her head and rests it on his shoulder.

He smoothes the hair back from her forehead, fingers playing along the braided sides of her head. “You did good, Clarke.”

She laughs a little bit then, surprised at hearing these words come back to her. She thinks that she and Bellamy might always differ on their opinion of her decisions, but she thinks that his forgiveness, his faith in her might be exactly what she needs to balance her belief in her own darkness.

\--

They spend two days in the village before the festival begins. Clarke shadows Nyko, watching him treat various small injuries, learning the names of the plants he uses. She knows some of them in English, and her knowledge of Trigedasleng is limited, but expanding under his tutelage. He rarely looks at her with anything but gruffness in his face, but there’s no scorn there, no pity, and she finds it refreshing. It’s honest, if nothing else, something she sometimes thinks she’s sorely missing in her life.

She runs into Lexa briefly on the second day, and she manages a small smile in her direction before Lexa turns away, turns back to the woman next to her. The look in Lexa’s eyes is uncomplicated, and Clarke finds relief in that, too. 

The night of the festival, they are once again offered food and drink, and Clarke’s stomach clenches at her flashback to the last time they tried to break bread with the Trigedakru, the wounds inflicted on Raven, the hostility that drove Lexa to kill her own guard. Still, the meal goes off without a hitch, and it’s the first time in months that she’s tasted anything with spices. They’re working on growing their own, with Monty at the helm, but there’s nothing like this now, and she finds herself eating more than she should.

It’s later that the dancing starts. The Grounders have modified some guitars, using something besides the traditional metal strings, and the resulting sound is haunting against the night sky. There’s a slow, mournful song that’s played first, and Clarke watches as Lexa and another woman, short-haired, tattooed, and fierce looking bow to each other and begin a slow swaying dance around the fire. In the eerie light of the fire, they look ethereal, and Clarke can feel herself getting caught up in the moment. 

As the tune switches to a faster rhythm, Grounders start getting up from around the fire, joining the dance. It feels less ritualistic, now, although Clarke has no idea if she’s reading it correctly. Still, when Octavia leans over her, her hand on Lincoln’s arm and tells her they’re going to join the dance with a mischievous grin, her eyes glancing toward Bellamy at Clarke’s left, Clarke assumes it’s now up to them to join. 

She slides her eyes over Bellamy’s face, but he’s watching his sister and Lincoln dance, and she can’t read his face, doesn’t want to ask him. They’re better than they were; they’re both happier, but she still feels like she’s treading on ice around him sometimes, and if it’s because that thing is slowly uncurling in her heart, or if it’s because she’s still not sure what damage she’s done to him, still feels like atoning – well, either way, she’s not going to ask him to dance. She turns back to the fire instead, watches as Miller and Monty get up and join the dance, and she’s poking Bellamy with her elbow and grinning as they both watch them. Neither of them seems very coordinated, but there are smiles on both of their faces, and that fills Clarke with more warmth than the fire. She watches as Octavia’s hair twirls in the firelight, watches as she and Lincoln spin around each other in perfect synchrony, and for just a minute, she envies their ease.

Then she remembers that it’s hard won, bites back her jealousy. They’ve more than earned their happiness, she thinks.

“Belomi!” The sound of a Bellamy’s name in Trigedasleng interrupts Clarke’s thoughts, and she looks up to see a strong, dark-haired woman smiling over Bellamy and holding out her hands. He looks over at Clarke for a minute, and she offers a smile and a nod before the woman hauls Bellamy to his feet and into the throng.

She watches him, feeling her heart curl in on itself. She’s not upset, she tells herself, refuses to be upset. Bellamy should do what he wants, and he should be happy too. It doesn’t have to be with her.

“That’s Echo. She and Bellamy were in the Mountain together.” Clarke looks up to see Octavia looking at her with a knowing look. “Come on, come dance. You can’t sit here looking furious forever.”

Clarke feels a little indignant, but when she looks back at Bellamy and Echo, she knows that Octavia’s probably right. She stands, brushes herself off, and tries to lose herself in the music. She dances until she can’t remember how long she’s been standing, and it’s only then that she feels his hands on her, and she turns in his hold, meeting his eyes. They’re dark, his entire face especially lovely in the shadows of the fire, and she feels a fire light through her body to match the one they’re dancing around. 

Neither of them is particularly graceful, she thinks, making a strange dance all their own to the rhythm, but they seem to find each other all the same, and before long she’s smiling again, too warm, and pulling away from the fire toward the moonshine.

“That was fun,” she gasps around a sip of moonshine.

He smiles back at her, and it’s the same look from the Unity Festival, the one he gives her when he thinks she’s funny. She feels the fire in her light up again, and for some incomprehensible reason, she sabotages herself.

“So, Echo’s pretty, hm?” She asks, trying to keep her tone light. 

He looks at her, a flash of confusion marring the look on his face. “What’d O tell you?”

“Just that you were in the Mountain together.” Clarke says, averting her eyes.

“Yeah. She, uh. She helped me out. She helped Maya and I so I could escape the cages.”

Clarke studies him for a minute. Any trace of fun in his face is gone now, and she feels horrible for dredging this up right now. She really isn’t any fun, she thinks darkly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think of that.”

He looks at her again, and the look in his eyes is different than anything she’s seen before. “You’re not the only one who’s done terrible things, Clarke. It’d be good of you to remember that before you go digging around for answers you don’t want.”

He turns away then, and she’s left with a gaping hole in her heart and tears stinging her eyes.

\--

They don’t talk for three days after that, and Octavia and Raven keep looking between them with curious expressions. Raven keeps trying to baby Clarke, which is so unlike her that Clarke finally snaps.

“I fucked up, Raven. I asked him about Echo, and I didn’t even really know about the cages, but I took a good moment and ruined it.” She throws down the rag she’s using to wipe down the table in Nyko’s tent.

Raven looks taken aback at her anger. “You didn’t know?”

“No. Because I’m selfish, and I left, and I made him bear that alone, on top of everything else.” She looks up at Raven, misery etched in every line of her face. “I feel like we get so close, so close to being happy, which is all I’d want for anyone if we’d had time to do much more than survive, but I feel like every time we get close, something messes it up. I mess it up.” She rubs her wrist against her forehead, trying to bat her hair out of her face. It’s long fallen out of the braids Octavia put it in almost a month ago, and she hasn’t had time to do anything with it since.

“Isn’t that the sort of logic that got you into this mess in the first place?” Raven asks frankly.

Clarke works her jaw before finally shrugging. “I don’t even know.” She shakes her head. “I’m fine, Raven. It’ll blow over, I think. At some point.” She gives Raven a wan smile, goes back to work.

The thing is, she thinks she was _jealous_ of Echo, jealous of someone else having some kind of happiness with Bellamy and now she feels incredibly foolish, can’t believe she was jealous of a person who shared a traumatic experience with Bellamy. Clarke shares plenty of those with him, and as much as she values his support, she certainly wouldn’t wish those experiences on her worst enemy. 

The Arkers leave two days after her conversation with Raven, and while she and Octavia and Lincoln are staying so she can help Nyko with the birth, everyone else, including Bellamy, is leaving. She goes out to say goodbye, and she meets his eyes with a small smile. He waves at her, but she thinks it’s half-hearted, and she sighs to herself. 

Octavia meets her for dinner later and looks at her shrewdly. “You two are idiots, do you know that?”

Clarke grits her teeth and thinks about walking out. She’s not in the mood for this side of Octavia right now, but she forces herself to stay put, tries to ignore her.

“God knows you’ve heard this before, but in case it didn’t penetrate your thick skull, you should be reminded that he did _exactly_ what you asked him to do. He handled the camp for months, negotiated with your mom and Kane to make sure that our people were treated fairly. He did that because you asked him to. And why did he do that? Because he _loves you_ , Clarke. I don’t know if he’s in love with you, but he definitely loves you. He likes Miller and Jasper, I think he might even like Lincoln at this point, but he _loves_ you. If you don’t see that, if you don’t see how much you matter, you’re a fool.” She shakes her head at Clarke with a disgusted sound.

Clarke looks at her in brief, stunned silence. She’s not sure whether she’s going to burst into tears or hysterical laughter, but right now, she thinks either would be cathartic.

Of course, it’s then that Nyko comes and grabs her by the shoulder. She looks back at Octavia helplessly, who makes shooing motions with her hands and tells her to go deliver babies.

She’ll never get over the oddness of Blakes and their willingness to lay down the most brutal truths and brush it off moments later.

\--

The mother delivers the twins with relative ease, and it’s as Clarke is guiding the second child into the world that she thinks that this is a small miracle. A year ago, they didn’t think there was any life on this planet, thought they were the last to try and colonize it again. Here she is, a year later, welcoming new lives into the world, and it’s not a perfect world by any stretch, but it’s a good world, and she is living in it. She thinks of the months she spent alone, never sure why she was still living, but sure she wanted to.

This right here, she thinks, is why she wants to live. Because there are experiences like this one, for others, maybe even for herself, and she wants them if she can have them.

She smiles up at the mother, croons at her in Trigedasleng, tells her that she’s done the hard work. The two women propping her up on either side smile down at Clarke, and she’s filled with warmth, different from what she feels around Bellamy, but a certain happiness that reminds her that she is meant for more than destruction: she is meant for life.

\--

They wait a week to make sure the mother and babies are doing well, and Nyko walks her through the steps of working with a nursing mother. When she leaves, Nyko grasps her forearm, and tells her she is always welcome. She never gets a smile out of him, but she thinks they’ve built trust here, and for all that she’s still not sure what Nyko thinks of her, she genuinely likes him, appreciates his competency and his willingness to teach her. She smiles back at him, grasps his arm, and leaves without looking back.

The journey back with Octavia and Lincoln is often spent in quiet motion. It’s late summer now, and while it’s still hot during the day, the three of them sweating as they walk quietly through the forest, it’s cooler at night, and Clarke can tell they’re easing toward fall.

It’s been almost a year since they took down the Mountain. It’s been over a year since they landed; she celebrated her eighteenth birthday in solitude, trying to justify her own survival. She’s turning nineteen soon, and it’s an age she can’t even believe, with everything that’s happened, that she’s reached. She looks over at Octavia and Lincoln, walking side by side, and she thinks it’s amazing what they’ve accomplished here, even as they’ve barely scraped by. They’ve done so much better, achieved so much more, however meager it might be at times, than they ever could have in space.

She smiles to herself, walks toward home.

\--

It’s late at night when they arrive home, but she flops down by the fire all the same, sits next to him in silence. Finally, she reaches out her hand, hoping he’ll take it in his. He does, and she feels a weight lift from her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, just above a whisper. “I wasn’t thinking, and you’re right. You’ve carried a lot for me. I hope you know that I know that. And I know how hard it is to talk about things, but you should know that I’ll help you carry it, too. We’re not alone. I’m not leaving again. I’m here to bear it with you.”

She watches him for a minute. He looks at the fire, the light playing on his face. He sighs. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you, Clarke. I want us to be done being angry with each other. We did what we did, all of it, and right or wrong, it’s done. I don’t want us to have to do this forever.” He looks at her, her blonde hair a halo around her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She looks up at him and smiles, squeezes his hand. “I helped deliver twins this week.”

He laughs at that, and she nudges him before resting her head on his shoulder. She tells him about it until she starts to nod off, and that’s when he picks her up ever so gently, carries her to her room and tucks her in.

\--

_Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air/are heading home again_

They ease into making preparations for winter. Clarke goes out regularly, sometimes with Nyko, sometimes with Lincoln and Octavia, and starts to gather the things she needs to keep the medbay in good supply through the cold and icy winter. She talks with Nyko about the things she gathered last winter, learns more about what works and why, and gets insight into new treatments she can try. 

Bellamy goes out for days at a time, hunting and bringing back food, and while Clarke sometimes goes with him, she’s often too busy; it’s starting to feel like they’re ships passing in the night again, but this time, with longer looks passed between them, and reunions that include her checking his face for any injuries, and badgering him when he cracks a rib.

It’s around the time that he cracks a rib that the Council meets to discuss living arrangements for the winter. Bellamy wanders into the medbay after a meeting, frustration written in the pinching of his forehead and sits down. Clarke is organizing her herbs, taking an inventory of what she needs the next time she goes out when he walks in, and she can already tell the meeting didn’t go well. Still, she’s almost done, so while she acknowledges his presence with a smile and nod, she turns back to her work and finishes before talking to him.

When she turns to him, she catches his appraising gaze on her, and the look in his eyes sends heat rushing down her spine. Since their fight at the festival, she’s been increasingly aware of what she’s been thinking about for a while: her feelings for Bellamy are not platonic, and they haven’t been for a while. At her most frustrated moments, she thinks it’s just that she wants to jump him, have her way with him, and then consider it done. She knows, though that it would never be enough. Whatever she and Bellamy have, it isn’t going to limit itself to a one-time thing, and she doesn’t think she really wants that. (Still, as comfortable as she is with her own touch, she longs for another’s).

He grins at her then, his forehead easing, and she smiles back at him. “How did the meeting go?”

He snorts. “Well, the issue of housing came up.” She raises an eyebrow, cuing him to continue. “We – didn’t do so well at first, last winter. We were sick, and spread out, and it wasn’t until your mom came up with quarantine wards and clean wards and we all bunked in tightly that we began to survive and do reasonably well. We’ve been arguing about what the living arrangements should be for this winter.”

Clarke considers this for a minute. “And which side are you on?”

He shakes his head, his hair getting in his eyes. “I think we need to do it again. I don’t think the Ark is warm enough for people to survive in their separate quarters, and we can’t, and probably shouldn’t, cut that much firewood. Your mom thinks it starts out as a disease risk, and it means we can’t get ahead of things like colds, that then turn into pneumonia.”

She purses her lips. “What are you thinking of, in terms of number of people per room?”

“Last year we were crammed in as tight as we could, especially before we got blankets.” His eyes slide over her face, and she can feel the tension in her forehead. “I think we could do it differently this year, do two to four people per room and set up quarantine areas early. She hasn’t been acting as the doctor for several months, though.” He’s looking at her expectantly, and she knows immediately that he wants her to give her medical opinion to the council. 

She’s purposefully avoided any and all doings with the council since she returned. She’s pleasant with all of the members, and she gets along well with Kane and her mother (including the fact that they seem to spend not only all their waking, but also their sleeping hours together), but she doesn’t want anything to do with the council. 

She knows she has power. She just doesn’t want to draw on it. Doesn’t want to touch the wellspring that drove her so fiercely last summer.

“Bellamy, you know I don’t want to sway them. You know I don’t want to be involved.” She feels cowardly right now, and she’s not unhappy with him, but she doesn’t like him coming to her and asking this either. 

He shakes his head again, sighs. “I know. I’m not trying to push you, but we really need a medical opinion on this, and I could ask Jackson, but you know he worships the ground your mother walks on.”

“I don’t think I’m any more of an objective opinion,” she says wryly, before flushing at the implication.

He looks at her for a second, before the sharp grin passes over his face. 

She bites her lip for a second, then says, “Tell me more about your plan later, and I’ll decide if I’ll talk to them about it. I’ll need to know how rooms were assigned last year, how many you think are strictly necessary, and how you handled quarantine, and then I’ll make a decision.”

He nods. “I’ll talk to you later, then.” He brushes her arm when he walks out, and Clarke really, really just wants to hit her head against a wall until she regains her normal senses.

\--

They get dinner and bring it back to her room so they can talk it through, so they aren’t overheard by council members, or even the delinquents who would probably side with Bellamy (and maybe get in trouble for it. Clarke’s been back long enough to see the strain on them, the frustration they feel, not infrequently, back under the thumb of the adults). 

Bellamy brings a map of the Ark, explains in detail how they started out last winter, how they worked through the flu, through an outbreak of pneumonia, and they work it through for hours, trying to make it so that people are assigned together in ways that are acceptable to everyone involved (families together, Octavia and Lincoln in with Monroe and Harper, trying not to put couples together) until finally, Clarke’s eyes are blurring with exhaustion and she’s leaning into Bellamy. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it might be enough to convince the Chancellor, might be enough to garner a compromise. Her fingerprints are all over the design, all over the approval for a full quarantine unit, separated into those at higher risk and those with stronger immune systems, but Bellamy will take it to the Council the next time they meet.

When Clarke lurches to her feet, she wobbles, and Bellamy is right there to catch her. It’s moments like this that she thinks about how consistently he supports her, how willing he has been, in spite of any resentment he held toward her, to give her space, to continue to work with the Council, to never pressure her to add to her duties around camp. She knows she is grateful for his presence in her life, but it is now, as he holds her elbow and guides her to her bed, that she realizes how much she wants him to be able to rely on her in the same way. She doesn’t know how to communicate this with words, so she turns toward him, wraps her arms around him. His arms go around her without hesitation, and she doesn’t really know what to think they are at this point, but she remembers how she felt safe with him, and she’s so glad to feel that way again – comforted, if nothing else, by his presence.

What she really wants is for him to stay with her, curl around her, and let her fall asleep against him, but she doesn’t know how to ask, isn’t sure if she’s allowed.

She thinks the right thing to do is to let him go, and so she does, with a final squeeze to his hand. She isn’t sure if she’s imagining the questioning look in his eyes, doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

\--

The Council approves their plan with little dissent. She isn’t there, but she sees Abby raise her eyebrows at her later, and Clarke bites down on a grin. She knew it wouldn’t escape her mother’s notice, but she feels like it was a good choice, the kind of choice that saves their people and doesn’t put people in the lurch, and that’s the kind of decision she’s proud of. It requires no ruthlessness, just careful thought, and it wasn’t hers alone. 

They make the appropriate moves quickly, as Lincoln mentions that he thinks animals are already going into hibernation, heralding an early winter. People gripe a bit as they move around, especially the adults and the families, but the delinquents seem to think of it as a grand sleepover, and when Monty and Miller wander into the room that they’re sharing with Clarke and Bellamy (there wasn’t really any discussion between the two of them about moving in together, and she’s not sure if she feels weird about it, or just frankly grateful that there wasn’t any awkward conversation and Bellamy just wrote their names down together), Monty’s grinning like the holidays have come early. Jasper’s down the hall making a ruckus, and it sounds like Monroe and Harper are singing at the top of their lungs as they move mattresses around. It’s all pretty festive, and Clarke finds herself grinning back at Monty as Bellamy claps Miller on the shoulder, and it feels like _home_ , but even better. 

\--

_whoever you are, no matter how lonely/the world offers itself to your imagination_

The snows come almost three weeks after they start living in close quarters. They still have the full medbay, and Clarke is still there every day. Bellamy is out hunting almost every day, usually taking Miller and some of the Guard; Monty is often in the greenhouse, and between the four of them, they come home, eat fast, heads over their bowls, and fall directly asleep. Clarke and Bellamy sleep head to head at right angles, and the first time Clarke sees Monty climb in with Miller, she can feel the grin stretching her face. She looks at Bellamy and sees him looking at her, a smile playing at his own lips. His eyes, though, show something more like longing, and she feels that shiver again, before curling up in her bed.

They’re snowed in for almost a week, snow falling consistently and piling up, and while people are out shoveling pathways to and from the medbay and the mess hall, there’s also a lot of them holing up in their rooms, or gathering together, and for the first time, Clarke feels like she has all of the delinquents together again, and there are so many missing faces that still make her insides ache with guilt, but there is laughter and it feels like Unity Day again, just a little bit. 

During the day, she’s started drawing, often while Bellamy reads next to her, and having the drawing materials is a reassurance to her while they’re in such close quarters. She remembers the year before, digging graves before the ground froze, almost destroying these precious materials, and she’s so glad she’s got them, so glad she’s sharing the weight of those lives again. She looks at Bellamy sideways, and his mere presence is enough to soothe any demons that come hammering at her doors. 

At night, they take turns doing things. Bellamy tells stories, long epics that take days to relate; he starts with stories of the stars, at the request of some of the youngest among them, then moves on to Roman and Greek epics, and Clarke sketches, and Octavia rests in the circle of Lincoln’s arms, Raven and Wick tinkering side by side, their arguments hushed and dotted with the brightness of Raven’s smile. 

They are weaving themselves back together, slowly but surely, each of them healing in time. Monty lays with his head in Miller’s lap, Miller combing through Monty’s hair, Jasper laying nearby, staring up at the ceiling. Clarke sketches all of them, trying to capture these moments where they are whole and happy. She doesn’t know what spring will bring; it seems easy enough right now, but she feels that it’s been almost too easy since the festival, and maybe it’s being inside so much, but she’s starting to wonder about what else is out there – threatening or not.

There are nights when Lincoln tells stories in Trigadesleng, the delinquents barely following, while Octavia makes shadow puppets on the walls, miming the story. On one of these nights, Clarke falls asleep against Bellamy’s shoulder, wakes only when he tucks her into bed. She tugs on his arm, looking up at him through bleary eyes, and asks him to stay with her. He doesn’t do what she wants, doesn’t wrap himself around her, but he drags his pallet next to her nest of furs, holds her hand until she falls asleep. He traces her features with his eyes while she sleeps, sighs, and rolls over.

\--

When the first storms break, there are a few cases of frostbite, but Clarke is optimistic about how everything is working so far. The hunting parties go out, and while they don’t bring much back, Clarke thinks they’ve got an okay stock for now. She can always head out with them at some point, although she knows Bellamy will object.

It’s when they get back, after everyone has settled in, that the howling storm starts. Clarke never saw anything like this last year, snow coming down so hard and fast that it’s blinding, wind roaring around the Ark. For the first time in a year, she’s not warm enough, and it makes her panic a little bit. That night, Bellamy sees her shivering, must see something in her eyes, because when he lays down, he pulls her toward him until they’re pressed together at every junction. He drags her furs and his blankets over them and holds her close. Her shivers gradually slow, and when they do, she starts talking.

She tells him about the storms she weathered last winter, and if he goes tense when she starts talking, he soon relaxes, listens to her. She’s not really sure why she’s telling him this, but the cold has made her a little panicky, and feels like she needs to get this out there, remember the demons of winter, and let them free at long last. She hasn’t talked to anyone about what she did while she was away, hasn’t felt like it’s the right thing to do. She’s not sure it’s the right thing to do now, but the words are falling off her tongue, and it feels like the last stones are being lifted from her chest, one by one as Bellamy traces designs on her back and she whispers into his chest.

She feels like she’s exorcising demons, letting them free into the cold and the dark in the hopes that they find their way out into the night.

Finally, when she’s worn out with talking, she’s warm, and she can feel herself falling into sleep, Bellamy breathing deeply alongside her.

\--

The next night, Bellamy tells her about the camp while she’s gone, and it’s in fits and starts, explaining coming back, telling Abby that Clarke was gone. Finding someone to nurse everyone back to health. Making an agreement with the Grounders to make it through the winter. Finding the things she left for them.

She listens, her nose pressed against his sternum, feeling his chest expand and contract, and she’s not sorry she left last year. She’s sorry she abandoned Bellamy, sorry she left her people, but she’s not sure if they would have made it here, to what is happening now, without her making those horrible decisions, taking power at every step to keep him safe, and holding onto it until it bled her dry. 

When he finally falls into silence, she looks up at him, traces the lines on his face with her eyes, thinks about how much older he looks. They’ve grown and changed, and she’s pretty sure, more now than ever, that she loves him, never wants to leave him again. She thinks back to what Octavia said some months ago now, _he loves you_ , feels it settle in her bones for the first time. She’s not sure if she deserves it or not, isn’t sure what any of them deserve after all this time, all this war and misery and surviving only to survive, but she wants this, wants to be close to him, to share with him.

She tilts her head up, brushes her lips across his, brief, dry, and chaste, but it’s all the reward she wants, enough to send a spark of joy through her veins when he looks down at her in shock. She’s smiling and nuzzling her nose into his chest before he can really react, but then he’s brushing a kiss over her hair, pulling her closer, and she can practically feel herself humming under his touch. They fall asleep like that, twined ever closer, and when she wakes up in the morning, they are wrapped as close together as two people can be, and it is everything she wants.

\--

The blizzard stops and brings several cold, sunny days. For the first time since winter started, Clarke goes out with Bellamy when he goes hunting, leaving the med bay to Jackson, and it isn’t that she wants a break, exactly, and there are few things she misses from last winter, but she can’t shake the longing for cold, clear air in her lungs, free from the oppression of living in camp. 

She dons her heaviest furs, pulls her hood up, and wanders over to meet Bellamy at the gate. He takes one look at her and tweaks the end of her braid where it sticks out of her hood, and the happiness she’s started feeling around him, the low-level, consistent, and fulfilling kind of happiness spikes as she grins back at him.

They are both quiet walking through the snow, long practice of hunting alone and in groups teaching them to move surely, even in several feet of snow. They walk side by side for quite a while, waiting to pick up a trail, jostling each other and bumping arms, grinning quietly in the brightness of the day. It’s easy being out together, she thinks; it would be easy to leave camp behind to its own devices, strike out on their own, and she feels wistful at the thought of having few responsibilities. Still, she’s done that before, and she didn’t stop worrying. She thinks someday of them taking a week to themselves, finding the ocean; someday, she thinks.

They don’t end up bringing down any game, although Clarke shows Bellamy how she used to set up snares for smaller animals. Now, they set up them up farther in the woods, down near the stream, hoping for animals that might come out of their holes to forage in the deep of winter. Anything they get will be small and lean, but that’s what they are in winter, too, and they need everything they can get.

When the sun is overhead, Clarke brings out lunch. They’ve been eating smoked meat off and on for over a month, and it’s getting tiresome, but as much ground as they’ve already covered, they both eat quickly, and Clarke thinks she could have easily eaten more. 

It’s as she’s using snow to clean her hands that she feels dampness in her hair; she’d taken off her hood several hours in to the morning, heating up as she moved around. Now she brushes at it, comes away with dampness on her hands, and glares up at Bellamy. He’s smirking down at her, and when she throws snow in his face, he immediately responds by launching a snowball at her before running away. She’s on her feet immediately, chasing after him, and it isn’t long before they’re both in a snow drift, laughing until their sides ache, and she loves this, loves when they have time to be something other than authority figures. She knows they’re going to have to find times like these, that they’ve been letting this sort of opportunity slip away.

It’s as they’re making their way back to camp that she realizes she’s gotten too cold, that she’s shivering, and Bellamy looks at her in concern before wrapping his outer layer around her.

“It’s fine, Bellamy. I’ll warm up when we get inside. You need to stay warm, too,” she chides him.

He shakes his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “I shouldn’t have let you get cold. You can’t get sick.”

She rolls her eyes at him, keeps moving forward.

That night, she starts coughing, and doesn’t stop for over a month.

\--

At first, she ignores the cough. She knows she should know better, but she doesn’t feel sick, and she has too many other things to do, treating latent frostbite, soothing nervous parents who have a snotty kid. She wears a mask in medical, and if anyone looks at her askance when she starts coughing, she just laughs it off, mentioning the cold dry air.

It’s at night, several days after they get back, that she starts coughing, and however much Bellamy tries to soothe her, she can’t stop. Miller is finally the one to yell that she needs to get to quarantine, that she’s let it go on long enough, and she’s getting worse, not better. She’s trying to hold the coughs in as Bellamy yells back and tells him to mind his own business, and she’s clutching his arm, trying to get him to stop, because she can’t tell him to, and she knows: it’s bad.

When Bellamy looks back at her, she’s holding her shirt over her mouth, but she’s not drawing air easily, and that’s when he scoops her up, takes her to medical at a fast jog, and goes and gets her mother. 

Her mother comes in wearing a mask, takes one look at her, and kicks Bellamy out. “You can come back if you develop symptoms, but not until then,” she says sternly. He opens his mouth to protest, but she holds up her hand, and turns her back on him, and Clarke knows he hates it when her mother pulls rank on him, but he’s look at her with desperate eyes, and it’s all she can to do nod at him and shoo him out.

“Clarke, why did you wait this long? You should have been in quarantine yesterday, if not days ago.” Abby’s chastising her, and if she had the energy, Clarke would be rolling her eyes, because only her mouth could chastise her when she can barely _breathe_.

Her mother finally gets a drip into her, and it’s soon that Clarke realizes there must have been a sedative in it, because she’s drifting off, but she can finally breathe, and that’s a relief.

\--

It feels like the weeks drag on and on as she stays in quarantine. She finally starts to get better, her cough easing back after two weeks and the strongest dose of antibiotics they have, but since she’s been exposed, she stays in quarantine to treat the others that start coming in within a week. Bellamy never catches it, and while she’s glad he’s healthy, the only times she sees him are through double-paned glass, and she just wants to hold him, curl back into his warmth, and wait the rest of winter out. Instead, she presses her palm to the glass, where his is, and talks quietly to him when she can. 

It is weeks before she is finally back out to see the sunshine, and it’s with a startling realization that she can tell that spring is just around the corner. The snow is in muddy piles around the camp, and while she knows, is intimately familiar with the fact that it could snow again, even a month from now, the hint of warmth in the air around her is enough to fill her with optimism.

It’s when she finally gets to see Bellamy again, though, without a piece of glass in between them, that her heart fills, and in all their times apart, she’s not sure she’s ever been so happy to see him. She runs to him as she has before, but when he picks her up, she knows that this is different. This is not the worry of being separated that has them pulling the other tight; it is instead affection and joy. She smacks a kiss to the side of his head before he sets her down, and the dazed look in his eyes keeps her smiling all day.

\--

_calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - -_

They’re outside the camp, taking a quick break in between tracking a deer, and it’s such a beautiful spring day that she almost can’t help but flop down on her back, staring up at the sky. The clouds are moving quickly, but they aren’t threatening, and it’s the perfect day. It’s the sort of day that she doesn’t even remember from last year. She was so lost in trying to find her place again in the camp, proverbially keeping her head down, she sometimes thinks she forgot to literally look up and appreciate the world around her.

She knows, though, that it is a mark of her survival, of their joint effort, that has brought them here, and when she rolls over and looks at Bellamy, the look of peace on his face means everything. She is filled with warmth and light by this man, and she thinks, just maybe, that she loves him. She’s certain she loves him platonically, is grateful to have him beside her every day, supporting her and pushing her. She thinks, though, that her love for him is hedging more and more toward the kind where she doesn’t want to share him, and this has her beckoning him to her.

As he moves toward her, she feels an additional lick through her veins, the vague hum of fire, and – yeah. She loves him.

She grins at him, moves closer. His eyes grow wide, and when he glances at her lips, she moves toward him. It’s different than the last kiss they shared – it’s slow at first, just the press of lips, and she’s fighting not to grin against him, but when his hand comes up and wraps around the back of her head, she hums a little, and that is enough to change the timbre of the moment, to bring their lips back together more insistently. Their tongues brush together, and she is gripping his shirt in her hands, pulling him closer and closer to her, and when he pulls back to kiss down her jaw, her hips cant towards his, and she doesn’t get much friction, but it’s enough, and she’s moaning as softly as she can manage, but she can still feel him grinning against her, and when he pulls back, he says “Like that, huh?” And she wishes she had the dignity to answer coherently right now, but it’s been a _while_ , and she just – she wants him. In every way.

She’s nodding against his head at his words, and his hand is sneaking up her shirt, gently smoothing over her breasts, and it’s nice, but she wants, she wants, she wants. She pushes him back, and when he backs away from her, his eyes are dark, and he’s looking at her like she hung the moon, and she could get used to him looking at her like that, she thinks. When she pulls her shirt off, his eyes are on her body immediately, and she can feel the heat from her face trickling down the rest of her body, a delicious hum through her veins, and before he can reach for her, she’s taking off her bra, wrangling it over her head, and she can feel his gaze on her, and as soon as she can meet his eyes, she’s grinning at the look on his face, taking one of his hands and putting it on her breast, and they are in _business_ after that, her whole back arching into his touch. She grapples in between them, and while she doesn’t want him to stop touching her, she also wants to see _him_. She finally gets her hands on the hem of his shirt and yanks it over his head, feeling the beginnings of a laugh at the way his hair sticks up. She’s seen him with hair like that for months since they started sharing a room, but she loves it all the same, loves it even more now.

It’s slower, now, his mouth on hers, on her neck, gently taking all of her in, and she’s ready for him, but she loves this moment, seeing the sky from under the press of his body, the cool earth at her back, and if it’s slow, it’s slow in a heady way.

When they both wrestle their pants off, she stops to really take him in. This is the man that has stood at her side through countless acts, horrific and benevolent, has watched her slowly piece herself back together, has pieced himself back together in time. She thinks they aren’t two halves of a whole, but there’s something poetic about everything they’ve been through together, everything they’ve _survived_ together, and she thinks, finally, that they might actually be living.

When he reaches out for her, she grasps his hand, kisses his knuckles where they’re joined with hers. When he settles back down, she’s on top of him, and she reaches forward, kisses him wetly before easing herself onto him. He stretches her pleasantly, and if she hasn’t done this in a while, he’s easy, waiting for her to settle, and when she does, she sighs out. When she moves, she can feel the sparks shooting along her body, the slow drag of him inside her, and the roughness of his hands on her breasts is sending fire through her body, igniting all of her nerves, and he groans when she speeds up, gets his hand between them, rubs at her clit, and she is so, so close, clenching around him, and it is when he grabs one nipple in his teeth that she goes over the edge, breathing out a low moan. 

He waits until she’s slowed, opens her eyes, before he rolls them over, and when he starts thrusting into her again, she kisses him, her lips and tongue moving against his, her heels against his ass, spurring him on, deeper into her. She starts clenching on him deliberately, a wicked grin on her face, and he groans into her neck, muffling the sound in her hair. She nudges his face back with her nose, works her lips and teeth into his neck, biting gently. When she lets go, she whispers “Come for me,” into his ear, and he can feel the coil in the base of his spine snap at her command, and he’s emptying himself inside her, and she is stroking up and down his back as he comes back to earth. She nudges his face again, kisses him chastely, and allows him to pull out and roll them over so she’s draped across his chest.

She buries her nose in his chest as he traces his hands along her back, and she’s almost twenty years old, and never in her entire life did she think she’d end up here, but she doesn’t really think there’s another place she’d rather be.

Eventually they gather up their clothing, go back to hunting, but when they walk into camp, it is with butchered deer meet, a lightness in their step, and joined hands.

\--

_over and over announcing your place/in the family of things_

Nothing really changes, after that, except that Bellamy doesn’t move back to his own room when everyone goes back to their springtime living situations. Clarke works in the medbay, Bellamy works with the Guard and represents the remaining 100 on the council. It’s the same, except at the end of the day, Clarke looks forward to Bellamy’s stubble rubbing her skin raw, his warm body wrapped around her in the still chilly nights. She kisses him in the mess hall, and when Raven wolf-whistles at them, Clarke flips her off behind Bellamy’s back. 

She thinks, as she sits in his lap around the fire, his arms around her and her back pressed to his chest, that they couldn’t have gotten any luckier. They have survived, and they will live, and whatever comes in the future, they will face it together.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew, well, this is finally done! A huge thank you to cyborgianheart, who provided early beta-ing and suggestions. Title and all italicized components are from Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese", which is not only my favorite poem, but obviously heavily influenced the structure and content of this piece. I realize I totally glossed over the whole Jaha/Murphy/weird house on a hill thing, because I'm basically a huge shrug emoji about that plotline? Like - what even is that? Hopefully y'all don't mind.


End file.
